The increasing complexity of port operations and the need for sustainable solutions have driven the demand for innovation in maritime logistics. This project seeks to modernise tugboat operations by introducing electrification, automation and efficient maintenance. Traditional tugboats are costly to operate and maintain due to fuel consumption and labor-intensive coordination. Our approach integrates wireless charging technology, advanced route-planning automation, and digital twin systems for enhanced operational oversight. Predictive maintenance will further optimise vessel longevity and reduce downtime. Through this research and development initiative, we aim to examine feasibility of these innovations, and the economic and environmental benefits of smart tugboat fleets. The outcomes of this project will contribute to the UK's leadership in clean maritime technology, paving the way for future port innovations.
Port operations are essential for global trade, but they face increasing pressures to reduce emissions and improve efficiency. Current tugboat operations are heavily dependent on fossil fuels, leading to significant environmental impacts. Additionally, manual coordination between pilots and tugboats creates inefficiencies, increasing operational costs. The Tugbeam project directly addresses these challenges by developing a next-generation tugboat fleet that leverages electrification, automation, maintenance and data-driven decision-making.
One of the key innovations of this project is the development of a wireless charging system for electric tugboats. This system will allow for efficient and uninterrupted operations by eliminating the need for traditional refueling. Moreover, autonomous navigation technologies will be integrated to improve maneuverability and reduce human error, enhancing safety during berthing operations. In addition, advanced NDT techniques will be employed to provide enhanced structural inspection of tugboat with increased efficiency and accuracy.
The project will also introduce a digital twin framework, which creates a virtual representation of the tugboat fleet and its operational environment. This technology enables real-time monitoring, predictive maintenance, and enhanced decision-making.
By analysing vast amounts of data, we will examine if the electrified and autonomous tugboats can address complex challenges, reduce human efforts and errors, lower maintenance costs, and increase overall operational efficiency. The findings from this initiative will be shared across the maritime sector, contributing to the widespread adoption of automation and data driven decision making.
Wind turbines are designed to operate for a life time of 20-25 years. Once they are installed, the O&M (operation and maintenance) are the key to maximise the economic and environmental benefits of wind assets. This project aims to develop a complete solution for robot based inspection and repair of wind turbine blades (WTBs) in-situ, both onshore and offshore. Firstly, we will develop advanced optical techniques with laser heating, so that quantitative information of subsurface defects within WTBs can be obtained. (Current techniques including drone-based are limited to surface defects only). Secondly, a compact and efficient robotic deployment system will be developed which will hold the inspection unit and a robotic repair arm. The robotic system will be operated by engineers working on ground (for onshore wind turbines) or on a vessel (for offshore wind turbines), greatly reducing their risk exposure. When defects are detected and deemed reparable, the repair arm of the whole system will be activated to do the job in the sky. Field trials on wind towers will be conducted to validate the system.
Renewable Energy is a global requirement and increasing in demand due to decarbonisation and the need to reduce pollution generated from brown energy.
There were 341,320 wind turbines spinning around the world at the end of 2016, which equates to a capacity of 486.8GW globally. The total capacity at the end of 2019 is 651GW, an increase of 10% compared to 2018\. Although there is an increasing demand of wind turbines, market surveys show that current inspection methods are inadequate. Due to WTB's large size and stress caused by wind gusts, wear is fast, thus there is a regular need for inspection and maintenance.
There are a variety of inspection techniques that have been widely used in the wind industry, but few of them can be applied to inspect a wind turbine blade (WTB) onsite and in-situ. Ultrasonic testing is a pointwise contact inspection technique for homogeneous materials, thus is difficult to use to inspect the inhomogeneous composite material parts of a WTB on-site. Radiography has safety issues because of the use of radiation. Thermography is a promising NDT technique, but its capability of inspecting a WTB on-site is not proven, because the ambient temperature change due to wind flow will add strong noise to the captured thermal images. It is also highly susceptible to emissivity of the blade surface, which means any changes in emissivity caused by rain, snow and other contaminations will result in false alarms. The use of drones to inspect wind asset including WTBs is attracting more attention in recent years, however it is limited to visual inspection for surface defects only.
Shearography, as a non-contact inspection technique, is widely used to inspect various materials including composite in industry to identify subsurface defects. However, it requires a very stable working condition such as in a test lab or a test facility. The use of shearography in-situ for WTB inspection is not yet fully demonstrated, because WTBs are in constant vibration even when they are stopped for maintenance and inspection at good weather with low wind speed.
We have identified a way to address the stability problem for shearography by introducing a stabilising mechanism to the shearography so that it can work properly on a WTB in-situ. The ShearWin system will be the first shearography product in the world that allows human inspectors to deploy it on a WTB in-situ. A prototype system will be developed at the end of the project. With the technique protected by a patent (pending), the project consortium is confident that the innovative ShearWin product will be further developed into a commercial product to reach the wind energy service market within 1-2 years after the successful completion of this project.